06.03.2019
Positions on Emancipation Book Launch AA Bookshop, London.
Positions on Emancipation: Architecture between Aesthetics and Politics
Edited by Florian Hertweck and Nikos Katsikis
Wednesday, March 6, 18:30
AA Bookshop, London
This book documents and reflects a debate debate held in Schengen in spring 2017, organised by the Master of Architecture, European Urbanisation and Globalisation at the University of Luxembourg. It was an attempt to make explicit various trends in architectural thinking, all of which aim to liberate architecture from the excesses of capitalism. While our era of constant crisis demands stronger social and political engagement, during the last decades architecture has been largely characterized by a lack of strong positions. But a new tendency seems to stir up this unsatisfying situation. We can increasingly observe attitudes which try to address architecture and urbanism more directly engaged with the social and political development of our relentlessly urbanized environment. Against the postmodern, or post-historic, “anything goes”, these attitudes promote a concordance of conceptualization, methodological integration and critical action, interwoven with a renewed interest in the structural formation of spaces. A new social and political influence of the discipline is again claimed, without thrusting aside the aesthetic dimension of architecture. To what extent are these attitudes able to take into account the complexities of the socio-political, economic, ecological and cultural aspects of the production of space? Which architectural and urbanistic approaches might fulfill the postulated social and political ambition?
The event features the screening of a short movie by Christopher Roth, documenting the symposium, and a discussion between Florian Hertweck, Nikos Katsikis, Peter Swinnen (University of Luxembourg), and Costandis Kizis (AA) and Flavien Menu (Office for Cities).
Link to AA event
Link to Publisher Website.